Senate President Stephen Sweeney will hold up two of Gov. Phil Murphy's Cabinet nominees, a spokesman said Wednesday, the latest escalation in a feud between the two Democrats over spending and priorities.

Each of the nominees — acting education commissioner Lamont Repollet and acting higher education secretary Zakiya Ellis Smith — were interviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in recent weeks and appeared headed toward confirmation votes. But a spokesman for Sweeney said the Senate president has "concerns about the lack of responsiveness on the signature issues of school funding and college affordability."

Legislative aides said the dispute centers on policy, not the qualifications of Murphy's nominees. And their responses during legislative hearings raised concerns with Sweeney over fair distribution of public school aid and ways to bring down the cost of college through bills pending in the Legislature, the aides said.

"These top officials in the Murphy administration are responsible for adopting the reforms needed to provide full and fair funding for New Jersey’s schools and for following through on the bills to help make college more affordable," Sweeney spokesman Richard McGrath said in a statement.

"We haven’t seen or heard the level of willingness needed to make progress on these major priorities. We have worked hard on these policies and we can’t allow the opportunity to put them in place to be lost or delayed by inaction," McGrath said.

Even without Senate confirmation, Murphy's nominees can continue their jobs with no noticeable practical effect.

Sweeney's unwillingness to put Murphy's education nominees up for a vote is unsurprising given the chilled state of their relationship.

Although he and Murphy are both Democrats, the two have clashed since at least last year's election, when Murphy declined to step in as the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teacher's union, targeted Sweeney in his re-election. Murphy then named the head of the association to co-chair his transition's education committee and initially put another Sweeney foe, Frank Minor, on another transition panel.

Sweeney also quickly reversed his longstanding support of a millionaire's tax following the passage of the Republican tax overhaul in Washington, D.C., saying that raising rates is now an "absolute last resort." The millionaire's tax is a central component of Murphy's plan to raise revenues in the upcoming fiscal year.

For all their disagreements, though, Murphy and Sweeney say publicly that they get along fine and align on most issues. They each brush off the media's questioning about their relationship. But the Murphy administration expressed its first hint of frustration in a statement Thursday.

"The Senate president has unilaterally decided to hold up the confirmations of two high-qualified Cabinet nominees, despite overwhelming support from the Senate Judiciary Committee," Mahen Gunaratna, Murphy's communication's director, said in a statement. "There's no good reason why he's standing in the way of their confirmations."